


Vibrant

by Graideds



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Pining Josh, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, based around soulmate aus, here she go again, writing depressing ass one shots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6876424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graideds/pseuds/Graideds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes people find their soulmates. It's rare, though. Josh's parents weren't soulmates. Their neighbors were. They were the only ones in the state.</p><p>He thinks it'd be nice to have someone complete him. He's always felt like half of a person, not really there and just breathing, waiting for someone to be with and feel safe with.</p><p>It's not what he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vibrant

**Author's Note:**

> ay hit me up on tumblr @blvrredtyler and give me requests i will literally write anything

The first time he looks into Tyler's eyes, he doesn't see anything, just sad eyes in a twitching face. 

He's singing lyrics that hit something deep inside Josh and make him _feel_. It's a crazy experience. It's a maddening experience. He can't catch his eye, but that's alright. Maybe he doesn't need to.

The second time is because he came up to him after the show. He doesn't see anything.

Tyler's shy, but he's covering it up, compensating for his nervousness with his humor and offering him a CD of their album. Josh doesn't mind, because he can see what he is, and he knows he's the same. He buys the CD. Tyler looks elated. Josh can see his passion for his music in the way he gives him the CD case, in the way he looks at Josh in a new way after he buys it.

The next time happens because Chris is Tyler's band's drummer, and Chris is Josh's friend, and he invites him to his place. Tyler was there. Josh doesn't see anything when he makes eye contact, just the usual varying shades of black and grey and white. 

They talk about music and just a little bit of their lives. Tyler's funny and he thinks Josh is funny, too. His entire face lights up when he smiles or laughs. Josh can feel fondness taking root in his stomach already for the guy. It scares him a little bit, but Tyler suddenly starts laughing at something someone else did and Josh is distracted.

A year of eye contact passes, and Josh still doesn't see anything but gray with every glance at Tyler. 

Josh can safely say that Tyler's his best friend without feeling doubt or any kind of anxiety by new years. Tyler tells him all the time, asks him, because he's not afraid of the answer. Josh can always tell when he's having a bit of an off day because of it, when he's not feeling as happy as he can. He tries to be extra nice to him those days, bringing him food and reminding him in roundabout ways that he needs to eat. 

Tyler still makes jokes and still walks into rooms with his sunglasses skewered and whenever someone says to take them off or fix them he still says that he's famous and that he does what he wants, but he also still forgets about himself. Josh helps him remember. Josh feels honored to be the one able to do that.

//////

It's late one night, and Josh is tired and sweaty and so is Tyler. They've played one of their first shows in a bar and Tyler got them ski masks so Josh's face is all itchy because he's allergic to wool and Tyler won't stop apologizing and promising to do something for him, like his laundry or clean his room or take his drums to the next five shows. Josh keeps telling him it's fine. 

Josh looks over at him once, to tell him that "seriously dude, stop worrying about it, I really don't mind," when he sees Tyler's eye turn brown and the brownish leather that is Tyler's chair. He pauses, his mouth open, but Tyler starts yelling "turn! Turn!" so he yanks the steering wheel over and barely misses an oncoming car. 

He can't tell Tyler, for some reason, afterwards. For all that he knows that he's one of the most important people in his life, he can't deny the very true fact that Tyler doesn't see color because of Josh.

He just keeps his eyes on the road and barely keeps himself from crying at the beauty of the world around him. He barely keeps himself from letting out a sob when he glances back over at Tyler once he gets a little used to it.

That night, they sleep in the bed of their truck, just because they don't want to split their money between food and a hotel room. They have plenty of blankets and bug spray to keep them comfortable anyway. They stop in an empty lot, near the trees that dot its edges.

Josh pretends to go to sleep, wants to go to sleep, but he can't. He looks at the stars for a while, wondering in the faint blues and purples and the gold from the city's light pollution, wondering what dwells among them, before he sighs and turns onto his side. He revels in the blue blanket around him, breathing out a breath of amazement and rubbing the material between his fingers.

He takes in the silver tool box ahead of them and the red of their logo on his bass drum before his eyes finally fall to Tyler.

He doesn't have any names for colors yet, but his favorite has to be the color of Tyler's hair and his skin.

//////

He gets a tattoo of a tree and a galaxy above it on his right arm. He has to ask for the very specific colors that go along with it at the counter, when Tyler isn't around. The shop has to go through five different artists before they find one that can see color. 

He makes the tree have hints of Tyler's skin tone and his hair color and his eye color, and makes the sky have hints of what he wants his hair to be soon.

Later, Tyler gets tattoos as well, but only in black. Josh wants him to use his body as a canvas, get a watercolor tattoo or something; paint himself with an entire rainbow of abstract colors.

He doesn't say that, though, he just accepts Tyler's offer of getting matching tattoos. He gets the one on his arm behind his ear.

He feels hope blooming in his chest, that maybe Tyler's doing this to show that they're each other's.

//////

He starts dying his hair soon. Tyler asks what the point is, since Josh can't see color. He quickly responds with "I dunno. I just think it'd be cool. Like a secret I have that I don't even know."

He makes it blue. Like his arm tattoo, but lighter.

//////

Tyler meets a girl. When he looks into her eyes, the very first time, he sees color. She sees color when she looks at him. He comes in their apartment and immediately exclaims, "I found her, Josh, I found the one."

Josh feels something in his chest snap; not harshly, nothing brittle, but like a piece of damp clay being broken in half. It makes a sob climb up his throat, but he disguises it as a cough. _There goes that,_ he thinks despairingly, but grins at Tyler and makes him tell him all about her. 

She has blonde hair and blue eyes and a great body and is so sweet and Josh can't find it in him to hate her, but he's green with envy regardless. Every time they're going somewhere and Tyler swings his arm around her neck and pulls her in to kiss the top of her head Josh wants to grab Tyler's neck and pull his legs up around his waist and hold him there and pull him down onto his lips, hard and claiming and bruising, staring at her the entire time. He knows it's wrong.

He can't stop thinking about it. When they have to share a bed because they can only afford one hotel room and Jenna isn't there and the entire stage crew is in the room, he lays facing Tyler and memorizes his face. He's so tempted to push his head a little bit closer, just lightly glance his lips across Tyler's, but Tyler always wakes up whenever something touches his face and he does not want to explain that particular action to him.

It doesn't stop him from going to the other side of Tyler, though, and having him wake up with Josh draped over him.

//////

Tyler proposes to her. Josh sobs the entire night at his apartment. He's not angry, he's just mad at himself and feels pitiful for it. He could have _told_ him.

He wondered if this fucking shitstorm had ever even happened before, if he's really just so unlucky that the universe decided to throw him the finger and make his soulmate not have him as a soulmate in return. And then decide to give his not-soulmate a soulmate of his own.

He ends up drunk and crying himself to sleep. He wakes up on the floor of his kitchen.

//////

He barely keeps himself standing up during the wedding. He's happy for Tyler, he's happy for Tyler, he really is happy for Tyler, but he feels like he's going to throw up and scream and cry and pass out all at the same time when they read their vows and when they kiss and when they cut the cake. He has to go to the bathroom for a bit during the recession and just sit in a stall with his head in his hands. 

He hears the door open a few minutes in, and immediately wipes up his tears and blows his nose, but doesn't sniff, makes sure not to sniff or breathe too heavily. He's good at disguising his tears. 

It's a while before whoever walked in makes a noise. The first is the brush of fabric, and the next is an intake of breath and then Tyler's saying his name. Josh feels his stomach fall to his feet and sirens start to sound in the back of his head.

"...Yeah?" He says, but doesn't make a move to come out of the stall. He hears Tyler's shoes thunking on the floor, and then the door to his stall is swinging open. He looks up, trying to put on a face that says "I wasn't just crying."

Tyler looks at Josh for a moment, before he kneels down in front of him, worry bringing his eyebrows together. "Why are you crying?" Tyler asks. Josh slumps over. Of course he would know. Tyler's known him for _years_ and Josh has told him everything and shown him everything about himself because he loves him. The tears all come rushing back as quickly as that.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. Tyler's forehead is creased. He gets some toilet paper and hands it to him. Josh just holds it in his lap. It takes him a while to talk, but Tyler doesn't rush him, because he knows he'll get his answer. 

"D'you remember the first time we wore ski masks? To a show?" He asks. Tyler nods. "That drive back, you uh... you wouldn't stop apologizing about getting wool ones. You kept, uh, offering... to make it up for me, yeah? I didn't want you to, since it really was fine, but you... wouldn't give up," he reminisces, his voice quiet but steady. Tyler's getting apprehensive, wondering what he's talking about, but he's trying to encourage him to keep going. He does.

He tells him about how he saw color, when he looked at him that one fateful time, but about how he couldn't tell him, he just locked up. Tyler's mouth opens in shock.

"Oh, my gosh, Josh, how did I not _know_ \- "

"Really, it's not your fault, Ty - "

"You got a tattoo in color, Josh - "

"I had an excuse for everything - "

"You've dyed your _hair_ so many colors - "

"I mean they were kind of decent, so - "

Tyler stops him with a look Josh doesn't know how to describe; it's despair at causing him hurt, hopelessness for their situation. It's love for his friend, and love for him not forcing it on him, but grief because he doesn't love him back, not like that, and he's _getting married_.

"Josh, I don't-"

"I know," he says, quietly, years of sadness finding their way into his tone. He interrupts him because he can't hear it, not for real, without dying a little inside. Something in him, he knows, would snap.

"We can- we can talk this over, after the wedding," Tyler says.

"You're going on your honeymoon, Tyler."

He breaks eye contact and looks down, purses his lips. "After. Immediately after."

Josh believes him. Josh leaves the wedding early.

//////

When Tyler comes back, he's tanned up and his hair is lighter and he's even more caught up with Jenna. He still hangs out with Josh the same amount, but he's forgotten about their talk in the venue's bathroom, and he talks about her so much more. Josh can't find it in him to stop him and ruin his happiness.

So he lives on.


End file.
